The Schwab Foundation is a sister concern organization of the World Economic Forum. The Foundation provides unique regional and global platforms to promote social entrepreneurship as a key element to advancing societies and addressing social problems innovatively and effectively.

Programs

SEOY 2011

Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awards(SEOY) 2011

Background

The India SEOY Award identifies and celebrates visionary social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated systemhange models and are at the stage of scaling/replicating their ideas across India and in other countries.

Applications for the India SEOY Awards 2011 opened in April, 2011. The response was positive, and the quality of applications was by far the most competitive. The finalists of this Award are identified through an intensive 4 - step process.

140 social entrepreneurs submitted their applications, of which 18 semi-finalists were moved to the next round of the competition. The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation teams thereafter identified 6 applications for the next stage of the competition – i.e. the due diligence visits.

The four finalists, further selected from this pool, comprised extraordinary social entrepreneurs who are shaping and scaling large-scale solutions to build an inclusive India. They met the jury of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award on 12 November 2011 in Mumbai. The jury of eminent members from the corporate, media and the civil society sectors announced the winner on November 12, 2011.

NeelamChhiber was designated with the title of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 for India by Prithvi Raj Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

The finalist NeelamChhiber washonoured at the opening of the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit on November 13, 2011.

Mumbai, India - November 12, 2011

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, had announced NeelamChhiber as the winner of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2011. Prithvi Raj Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra and Ashwani Kumar, Minister of State for Planning, Science and Technology & Earth Sciences conferred the award to the winner in Mumbai. Industree Crafts Foundation triples incomes of marginal artisans by moving them from being ‘piece rate workers’ to owners and entrepreneurs of grassroot community enterprises. It works both at the production and market ends of complex supply chains and has impacted more than 10,000 artisans living below the poverty line, by putting them in charge of their own enterprise.

The other contenders for the award were Gyanesh Pandey from Husk Power Systems (Patna), Matthew Spacie from Magic Bus (Mumbai) and Sudesh Menon co-founder of Waterlife India (Hyderabad).

More than 140 applicants entered the seventh competition for the Social Entrepreneur of the Year India, selection process. After several stages of rigorous assessment, four finalists were chosen. An independent panel of pre-eminent judges met on 12 November to select the winners. The panel of judges included: ShobhanaBhartia, Chairperson of the Hindustan Times;Y. C. Deveshwar, Chairman of ITC Ltd; RohiniNilekani, Chairperson of Arghyam Foundation; Sudha Pillai, Member Secretary of the Planning Commission, Adi Godrej, Chairman of Godrej Group, Dr Harish Hande, Managing Director of Selco Solar Lights, MirjamShoening, Senior Director of Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Rajiv Khandelwal, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Aajeevika Bureau.

Started in the year 2005 the award is given annually to the individuals who have founded organizations or companies with targeted social missions, benefiting underserved communities. The winners enter the global network of 200 leading social entrepreneurs of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a sister concern organization of the World Economic Forum.

‘Industree’ triples incomes of marginal artisans by moving them from being ‘piece rate workers’ to owners and entrepreneurs of grassroots community enterprises. It works both at the production and market ends of complex supply chains and has aided more than 10,000 artisans living below the poverty line, by putting them in charge of their own enterprise.

At the producer’s end, Industree incubates community enterprises and common production entities that are jointly owned by artisans and local entrepreneurs (basically unemployed or under employed youth). At the market end, Industree’s multi-retail brand, Mother Earth, and aggressive sales force, set up with investment from the Future Group, offers the new producer- entrepreneur with a direct market platform to the Indian retail market, ensuring steady business of high volumes and smooth cash flows, year-on-year.

For every 100 Indian rupees of revenue increase for Industree, producer’s income increases by 58 Indian rupees. As a result, community enterprises incubated by Industree, and owned by artisanal communities, break even within their first year of operation. In addition, 13% of the brand Value of Mother Earth has been locked into a MBT for artisans to purchase at par.

For the month of August 2011, Industree has incubated 13 SHG-based community-owned enterprises and common production units in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and directly impacted more than 10,000 marginal producers and their families, of which 61% live below the poverty line, earning less than one US dollar a day. Industree also trains and sources products from 400 crafts-based collectives and SHGs in 10 Indian states, opening up the Mother Earth brand and market platform for them.

As a part of future plans for next 5 years,NeelamChibber and her team aim to directly support more than 50,000 individual artisans by incubating their enterprises and facilitate their diversification into newer products, brands and markets, beyond those offered by Mother Earth.

Finalists

Husk Power Systems

Social Entrepreneur: Gyanesh Pandey
Field: Rural Electrification; Clean Technology
Head Office: Patna
Year of Establishment: 2008
Legal Form of Business: Social Business
Website: http://www.huskpowersystems.com/

Husk Power Systems (HPS) is lighting up the darkest and the poorest rural regions of India through a proprietary technology that cost-effectively converts bio-mass waste (primarily rice husks and bio-wastes such as mustard husks/stems, corn cobs, and some varieties of grasses) into electricity. By installing and operating ‘mini power plants’ of 25kW to 100 kW, HPS wires up villages and hamlets of up to 4,000 dwellers, thereby providing electricity service (chargeable) to communities.

On an average, every HPS power plant serves 2,500 people and up to 25 small shops, enabling small businesses, especially rice mills, to generate additional income. It replaces 18,000 litres of kerosene per year with energy efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. In August 2010, HPS had replaced 10,000 tons of CO2 with clean energy, and saved a total $2.25M in cash for all households covered under its plants.

HPS currently runs 80 power plants that supply electricity to more than 200,000 individuals in 350 villages (a majority of which are off-grid) in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.Gyanesh Pandey and his team aim to set up 2,000 plants by 2016, impacting 5 million lives.

Magic Bus has pioneered a ‘Sport for Development (S4D)’ curriculum that harnesses the transformative power of sports to enable extremely marginalized children to channelize their energy, reflect deeply on life choices, and exercise positive development decisions in terms of education, health, gender and livelihoods. Targeting active citizens and future participants of the India, the initiative is a critical step towards development of the youth of the country.

Magic Bus has directly delivered the S4D curriculum to 250,000 children in the age group of 7-18 years in 5 states through a trained network of 5,000 Community Sports Coaches and Youth Mentors.Majority of the members aregraduates of the Magic Bus programme and had progressed from the same environment as the children they facilitate.

The cumulative cost-perhild of delivering the Magic Bus curriculum is 800 Indian rupees and is expected to drop further. As Matthew Spacie and his team prepare to directly reach 1 million children in the next 3 years the S4D is bound to make a mark.

Children, who engage with Magic Bus, live in impoverished communities with no easy access to role models, inspiration or facilitation to take positive life decisions. In Mumbai, (where Magic Bus delivers its services to 70,000 children every week), 20% of all Magic Bus participants across locations tend to be school dropouts, of which 34% has continued their studies due to the Magic Bus influence; 85% of Magic Bus participants across all age groups stayed clean of addiction; More than 95% of the youth in Magic Bus enrolled for higher education courses and 50% of those in employable age signed up for livelihoods and skill development initiatives.

To secure large-scale, systemic impact, Magic Bus has signed a formal contract with the Indian government to incorporate its S4D curriculum into the National Rural Sports Programme – opening up new avenues of opportunities for 30 million children at the Panchayati level. As pioneers of the S4D pedagogy in Asia, Magic Bus has also trained more than 150 organizations from the South Asian region in its sport-led approach to the changing behavior in resourceonstrained communities. Additionally, Matthew Spacie has partnered with premiere sports brands (Barclays Premier League, Nike, The Lewis Group) to strengthen the sustainability and growth of Magic Bus model.

WATERLIFE INDIA

Social Entrepreneur: Sudesh Menon
Field: Health & Clean Technology
Head office: Hyderabad
Year of Establishment: 2008
Legal Form of Business: Social Business
Website:
http://www.waterlifeindia.com/index.html

Waterlife India founded bySudesh Menon,MohanRanbaore and Indranil Das ensures safe and clean drinking water for under-served communities who live in geographies with high water contamination. According to government estimates, 65% of the Indian rural population and 35% of those living in urban areas do not have access to clean drinking water. This segment comprises Waterlife’s core customer base.

Waterlife India has developed a range of green and cost-effective water treatment technologies that can address complex combinations of water contamination in any area. Since 2008, 1.1 million people (excluding regular customers) have availed safe drinking water from its community water systems by paying a nominal amount.

The Waterlife business model partners with local governments, citizen groups and health workers who drive the education and awareness for clean drinking water. It sets up and maintains flexible community water systems that can serve populations from 2,000 to 25,000 by selling the capital equipment to the government, undertaking long-term operation and maintenance contracts for each system at a nominal paymentof INR 4-7 for 20 litres of water. A majority of its systems are media-based and can operate in off-grid villages.

Waterlife has set up 1,300 community water systems in 6 Indian states that have the highest levels of water contamination. Most Waterlife customers live below the poverty line and do not have the wherewithal to purchase water at regular market rates. Access to clean drinking water within this population base has led to dramatic declines in water-borne diseases, higher attendance in schools and increased incomes for local entrepreneurs and SHGs who deliver water to families that live away from the community water systems.

Sudesh Menon and his team aim to reach 25 million customers across India and South Asia by 2014.

Background

The India SEOY Award identifies and celebrates visionary social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated systemshange models and are at the stage of scaling/replicating their ideas across India and in other countries.

Applications to the India SEOY Awards 2011 opened in April this year. The response was positive, and the quality of applications was by far the most competitive. The finalists of this Award were identified through an intensive 4- step process.

140 social entrepreneurs submitted their applications, of which 18 semi-finalists were moved to the next round of the competition. The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation teams thereafter identified 6 applications for the next stage of the competition – i.e. the due diligence visits.

The four finalists, further selected from this pool, were extraordinary social entrepreneurs who have been shaping and scaling large-scale solutions to building an inclusive India. They met the jury of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award on 12 November 2011 in Mumbai. The jury included eminent members from the corporate, media and the civil society sectors. The winner was announced on November 12, 2011.

The Schwab Foundation is a sister concern organization of the World Economic Forum. The Foundation provides unique regional and global platforms to promote social entrepreneurship as a key element to advancing societies and addressing social problems innovatively and effectively. It also fosters a close-knit community of social entrepreneurs for idea exchange and replication of best practices. Finally, social entrepreneurs gain unprecedented networking opportunities with global decision-makers, thereby furthering the legitimacy of their work and mobilizing resources for continual expansion.